The Sanctuary

23

THE SOUNDS OF shuffling feet and grunting nudged Danny from his dream. But that couldn’t be true; he was still in a drugged fog. It had to be the slap on his face. But that couldn’t be true either. Renee wouldn’t slap him. Neither would the boy. Neither would Godfrey.

The ghosts were groaning in the night. Renee was nowhere now. Vanished. Had someone slapped him?

His eyes slowly opened, and for a moment he stared at the ceiling three feet above him, the surface a dingy gray in the dim light. The sound of his own breathing reminded him that he was still alive. One of Randell’s blows had bruised his ribs.

Why so quiet, Danny?

Cool air drifted over his body. He’d fallen asleep in his blue slacks, shirtless.

Danny closed his eyes and began to drift again. The fog settled and he turned his mind back to the vision of Renee. She was all that mattered now. Through his sacrifice, she had life. Because of him, she was free. If he lost her now, there would be no more reason to live.

Why so still, Danny?

It was a good question, spoken from the fog of his mind. So he opened his heavy eyes and thought about it.

Why so quiet? Prisoners had no privacy. The snores and coughs and grunts of other inmates were never-ending in the dead of night. But now the commons wing was perfectly silent.

He blinked. Why?

Danny listened, heart now throbbing with thickened blood. Not a sound beyond his own breathing. Maybe his ears weren’t working properly because of the drug the warden had given him. Maybe he’d slept through the night and the others were gone to the yard.

Maybe something was wrong.

He pushed himself up onto one elbow and tried to clear his head. It was still night. The clock through the bars on the hall’s far side read ten past midnight. But the wing was lit beyond his cell, not dark as it normally would be after lockdown.

His head felt like a steel ball as he turned it and glanced around the room. Gray. Undisturbed.

“Simon?”

The name chased emptiness around the room. Propped up on his elbow, Danny gripped the thin mattress with both hands and leaned over the edge.

The still form in the lower bunk took shape in the darkness. Its eyes were not closed. It was not sleeping. It was not clothed. It was not breathing. It was not Godfrey.

It was not alive.

Danny reacted without thinking, hurling himself off the top bunk. If not for the drugs, he would have landed on his feet. Instead he hit the concrete floor with his hip and left shoulder. Pain spiked his bones and jerked him to full awareness. He rolled to his left, slammed into the lockers with a loud clatter, and sprang to a crouch, eyes locked on the bed.

Peter stared at him, eyes wide, mouth parted like a dead fish. He was facedown, with his cheek flat on the mattress and his knees pulled up under his torso, as if bowing in prayer. His left hand dangled over the bed. Pale, delicate fingers pointed at the floor.

They’d cut him in a dozen places. They’d beat him to a pulp. They’d violated him and placed him here to beg forgiveness in supplication.

Danny staggered back, mind revolting.

“Godfrey?” He jerked his head around. No sign of the old man.

Danny pushed himself to his feet, shaking. Dear God, what had they done? Dear God, what had they done? Dear God…

And then Danny knew what they had done, because the words scrawled in blood on the wall behind Peter’s body made it plain.

WELCOME TO HELL, PRIEST

I LIKE GIRLS TOO

GOD

This was Randell and Slane’s doing, but he’d known that the moment he’d seen the naked body.

His second thought was of Renee.

In Danny’s mind, the boy and Renee were suddenly one. They were the same, and it was because of him that they were bloodied and butchered.

For a long, unending breath that failed to fuel his lungs, Danny stood unmoving, unable to reason properly. The boy’s white flesh looked ashen, stained by black blood and angry gashes. His eyes stared at him, pleading.

In the bowels of this sanctuary, Marshall Pape’s truth was a lie. His justice was revolting. An eye for an eye.

Nausea swept through Danny’s body. He stared back at Peter and let that familiar friend, rage, seep back into his bones. It swelled, then stormed, then shook his body.

He was suddenly moving toward the door. His steps carried him with only one thought.

Justice.

He reached his cell door and twisted the latch. Open. But of course it was open. This had all been planned. He stepped out onto the tier, turned, and quickly walked past vacant cells. There was no guard at the night station. There were no prisoners in their beds. The wing was empty except for Danny and the boy he’d failed to save.

The warden had moved them all out so they couldn’t see what happened next. Whatever that was, it could not be good, because there was no good in the warden’s sanctuary.

Images of the boy blinked through his mind. Peter and the girl who loved him, walking hand in hand through the park, smiling, delighted by birds. His bright eyes and eager voice: “Do you like chocolate, Danny?”

His fingernails dug into his palms, deeper with each breath.

“Oranges or grapefruit, Danny?” Dear Renee…“Grapefruit!” she would say before he could respond. “It’s better for you. I’ll put some sugar on it!”

He hated grapefruit but he would never tell her.

He hated prison. He hated the warden. He hated Slane. He hated himself. He hated the whole world because in the end it all came down to this.

To a deviant on his knees, bloodied and bruised because he’d been a naughty boy.

Danny spun around the rail at the stairs and took them down, one at a time, feet bare. They were waiting, he knew that. He was doing what they wanted him to do, he knew that as well. The monster would make him a monster, he knew that more than anything else.

So then, they would have their monster. None of them knew what he was capable of. None had stood by his side when he vindicated his mother’s death. None had faced him on the streets where his way of justice would drop them to their knees, begging for mercy.

The steel door that closed off the commons wing when it was locked down was open. Why wouldn’t it be? A way had to be left for the bull to be drawn to his slaughter. The rest of the prisoners had been moved to a safer place, where they could not witness what was to be done.

What the warden didn’t know was that the slaughtered could also slaughter. That there was a time for peace and there was a time for war and there was a time to rip their heads from their skinny necks.

The thoughts pummeled Danny as he entered the hub. In a single glance he saw that it was empty except for a lone CO, who stood at the door to the administration wing. The facilitator had his arms crossed, watching him without emotion.

But in that moment he saw one other thing: this third-shift guard was also a man.

Not a facilitator or an officer or a machine or a monster, but a man. Dressed in a black uniform. In that moment it was the only thing that distinguished him from those in blue and tan. They all had families. They all had their favorite TV shows. They all had their enemies and their loved ones.

This realization was the first to fracture his rage, but the effect vanished when he turned his head and saw that the door to the gymnasium was cracked open. Behind that door waited the warden. If not him, then his henchmen. If not them, then Randell and Slane.

There was now only one path ahead of Danny, and it ended with Randell. The man would never again hurt another soul. The warden wanted Danny to kill Randell or Slane or both. In retrospect, the message had been clear from the outset. And now Danny would comply. He would put both men in their own personal, eternal grave.

His feet padded on the concrete floor, the sole sound in the great room. He reached the door to the hard yard, took hold of the lever, and pulled it wide. Two more steps, through the threshold, and he stopped.

The lights were on, blazing bright. Over a hundred prisoners lined the walls, all eyes on him, watching in dead silence. An armed guard stood in each corner, rifles in hand. The center of the room was cleared of all but stained concrete.

Danny stood still, mind spinning, scanning the faces, most of whom he knew only by sight. He didn’t know them and they knew him only as the stubborn priest. Now they would learn more about him. Much more.

Some were dressed, some wore only shorts, as if they’d been awakened and herded here quickly. He saw Godfrey halfway down the right side, frail between two larger members. Danny quickly picked out Kearney, then Tracy Banner and John Wilkins. He didn’t immediately see Randell or Slane.

No other prison could possibly produce such a moment. No other warden would allow, much less facilitate, a similar confrontation. No other inmate population would stand in wait, silent. There would be calls and taunts; the room would be full of bitterness and objection.

A whistle sounded from the far corner, and Randell stepped out from behind the line of members to Danny’s left.

“You looking for me?” Randell walked toward him wearing a twisted grin. “You don’t like what you saw?”

Danny moved forward, taking even, confident strides. The simple fact of the matter was that he could destroy the larger man. The world had seen too much evil from this devil.

“You want to fight me, is that it, Priest?”

Slane stepped out from the opposite corner. “How about me, boy?” His hands were bloody.

Danny stopped halfway across the hard yard, mind flashing back to that singular moment so many years ago in Bosnia when he hid behind a stove in his house and shot three killers. His life had come full circle. The victim was Peter now, but his mind was drawing no distinctions.

“You killed the boy,” Danny said, staring at Slane’s body, his bloody hands and arms.

“Oh, I did much more than that,” the man said.

Danny dipped his head. “Then come here and do it to me,” he said.